Bringin' It Down A Notch Or Two PT 2

Well, I don't figure most of you were as anxious as I was to see the suspension upgrade on my '55 pickup get finished, as I had been driving around for a few months with an airbagged four-link rear and a parallel-leaf I-beam front--you can imagine the type of battle the two were having with each other! Since Total Cost Involved was pretty bogged down with their daily grind, the decision was made to have the TCI air-spring IFS installed by Brian Jendro and his crew at Temecula Rods & Customs. I've known Brian for many years (he actually bagged my '54 Chevy Bel Air almost 10-years ago), so the quality of his shop's work was never in question. We set aside a week in November, and the following documentation should be a good indication that everything went just as planned.

The removal of the stock front suspension revealed that at one point in the truck's history, a little fender-bender caused some tweaking in the left-side framerail. While the damage was ahead of where the TCI crossmember was to go, Brian didn't want any geometry problems; so some heat and a port-a-power were used to cure the situation. From there, it was simply a matter of following TCI's measurement references in the directions in order to locate and weld the three-piece crossmember in place. In those same directions, it states that the factory motor-mount crossmember need not be removed. Because it looked awkward and out of place, it was removed anyway and subsequently replaced with a mandrel-bent tubular piece. For more added strength, boxing plates are provided with the kit, but again, Brian went a step further and added plates from the crossmember forward, as well.

The remainder of the job primarily consisted of installing components for the running brake and airbag lines, reconfiguring the steering (with Borgeson joints and an RB's Obsolete Column Saver), and making sure everything fit and functioned properly--which it did. The last order of business was to get the truck properly aligned, but before doing that, we had to figure out just where we wanted the frontend at ride height (this is where pressure gauges are necessary--but not always perfectly accurate). With all said and done, I was left with a nice 50-mile drive from Temecula to Riverside for the initial break-in, and happy to report not a single problem (even to this day).

As much as I bragged about having a stock-suspension daily driver pickup, I'm eating my words now that I've got a few hundred miles on the odometer with the IFS! Now, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with parallel leaf/straight axle setups--but once you go independent, there's no going back! Plus, with the addition of the Firestone airbags with individual manual-valve controls, I've got the best of both worlds.